


A Book of English Verse

by cathouse_mary



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathouse_mary/pseuds/cathouse_mary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If a gentleman wishes to know what a lady wants, he might try asking her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Book of English Verse

**Author's Note:**

> [**cardigrl**](http://cardigrl.livejournal.com/), you asked for Severus/Narcissa, life outside of Hogwarts, kiss with fade-to-black. I hope that you'll enjoy!

**Recipient:** [**cardigrl**](http://cardigrl.livejournal.com/)  
  
 **Author:** [**cathouse_mary**](http://cathouse-mary.livejournal.com/)  
 **Title:** A Book of English Verse  
 **Characters:** Severus/Narcissa  
 **Rating:** All-ages  
 **Content Info:** Mentions of infidelity  
 **Summary:** If a gentleman wishes to know what a lady wants, he might try asking her.  
 **Disclaimer:** These are Jo's. I am simply speculating.  
 **Word count:** ~1,776, so saith Word. Vignette.  
 **Author Notes:** [**cardigrl**](http://cardigrl.livejournal.com/), you asked for Severus/Narcissa, life outside of Hogwarts, kiss with fade-to-black. I hope that you'll enjoy!

 

* * *

 

  
 **  
A Book of English Verse   
**   


"She walks in beauty, like the night."

It irritates him, that particular line, playing constantly in his head like one of Lily's old, scratched records. Severus has never been much of one for verse, unless it's one of Shakespeare's historicals or tragedies with blood and madness and murderous comeuppance by the bucketsful. Titus Andronicus is a favorite, of course MacBeth and Richard the Third. But Byron? Byron the poncy chameleon and puffy sleeved dissolute? It was not to be borne. Leave Byron and his ilk to those faithless enough to admire inconstancy and gimlet-eyed caprice.

Still, when he sees Narcissa that poem is the only thing that comes to mind. It torments him as she does, in the cloisters of his mind, a mortification of almost religious ecstasy. She is a woman for whom one might write poetry and suffer torments, for whom the chivalrous ideal could have been created to honour. Narcissa is a jewel of womanly virtues; a witch of beauty, grace and strength as to eclipse all others.

And she is Lucius' wife.

Lucius Malfoy, his schoolboy idol, and later his mentor and former inamorato to whom he owes much; including the patronage of Lucius' father Abraxas and his influential, wealthy friends. Still, a look from Narcissa and Severus is a firstie again, heart skipping a beat at her smile, the scent of her perfume, the whisk-whisk of her robe and all the time never showing the ecstatic torments, the joy and despair that she is to him - his _princesse lointaine_ to his nascent alchemist knight-errant. He loves her from afar, offering her only _amour courtois_ , that peculiar and potent blend of fleshly lust and spiritually transcendent, at once humbling and uplifting, passion-drunk and lamb-chaste.

It is an image that appeals to Severus very much; for above all things he is a rational man who is ruled not by his penis, but by his mind and his own faculties. He is a Slytherin, and through his fortunate place in that House he can fully see the way of things, and also how they might choose to go. Lucius has led him into a place that elevates him from the cabbage-and-gin perfumed vulgarity of Spinner's End to the doorstep of a place he might have had, had his mother chosen better. Severus will be true to his Prince blood, even if his mother was not. It is, after all, how Narcissa addressed him all those years ago. Severus Prince. Not Severus Snape, son of Tobias. With a sentence, Narcissa had neatly excised him from Severus' being, assigning Tobias as a mouldy shrivelfig to the dustbin.

But she is not a plaster saint, but human and beautifully so.

Doubts and frailties, insecurities and jealousies, flaws and quirks - he marks them all. When she weeps or rages about Lucius' peccadilloes and bedsporting, he listens. Her fears of being cast aside for another woman more able to bear a child leave her thin-lipped and pale whenever Abraxas has the ill-grace to speak of them. And on the nights when Lucius returns to the Kensington house from a summons and locks himself in his study with a bottle of vintage Tesseron, she paces the floor with ferocity at being left unable by custom to ask what he and Severus have done.

As she paces, another line of poetry comes unbidden to him, though to his relief it is Blake's tyger in her forests of the night and not bloody Byron.

"I'm sorry." The words are unbidden and check her steps for only a moment.

Her gaze rakes him, icy and burning at once. "For what are you apologising, Severus?"

"Only for your worry." Though heaven knows he should apologise for occasionally bedding with and lying for Lucius. Whether such trysts are defined as adultery or simply sodomy is a philosophical exercise at best. "You should not be oppressed with such."

Cygnus Black's death earlier this year occasioned a miscarriage, and Narcissa is deeply sensitive to the implication that Abraxas ought to have chosen a hardier bride for his heir.

"I know what you are doing is important, Severus. Do not patronise me, I will not have it." She snaps the flared sleeves of her velvet robe down over her hands, crossing her arms on her chest. "I am not some light-minded Gryffindor mudblood, needing protection from my own element."

The fangs come out and Severus savors the pain of the bite, and the anger that comes on the heels of it. Slytherin is where his true friends are found, not in that lesser, mollycoddled House. Slytherins have a reputation for skullduggery, but Potter, Black, and Lupin surpassed them all - and one of their own kiss-arse coterie will soon surpass them. It is more than fitting.

Still, he can give her something - maybe - to ease her.

"It was a matter of prophecies. Our Lord was most interested in several of them." That was tactical understatement; obsessed and frothing at the mouth was more like it. There were unspoken times between him and Lucius where they had to question just what they were doing. The older men were not the ones at crossed wands with the Aurors, after all. Nor were they the ones dying or being thrown into Azkaban. If their Lord's aim was to elevate pureblood society, it might be better if not so many of their young men were killed off. "We have reason to believe such are in the custody of the Unspeakables."

The news eases her shoulders fractionally, and lets him coax her from her tyger-pacing down the portrait-lined corridor and into the conservatory. Simply having her on his arm is an illicit thrill.

"Prophecies should never be listened to overmuch, Severus. Most of them are perfect twaddle, the blabbering of unsound minds and flawed magic. You of all should know that, being of a most rational mind." She never condescends to him, which he appreciates. Others do - his teachers did, Lily, and even some of his current comrades see fit to treat him as a step above a house-elf - it is a sterling rebuke that Narcissa treats him as one of the Blood Born. "Anything can be made of most prophecies, and even if the seer was foaming ectoplasm from all orifices - well, any moderately able third-year can mange that."

"You are, of course, correct. However the particular source is of interest." Tea awaits them, the Goblin-silver service and soap-bubble thin porcelain cups gleaming mellow in the candlelight. Severus holds her chair as a gentleman ought. "Though not considered especially talented, nor are the incidents of prophecy frequent, they are plainly worded and generally very accurate." And at times worrisomely so.

She studies him closely. "You are worried." She reaches out, rubbing the spot between his eyebrows, his blood taking a pleasantly fizzy shock at her skin on his. "This line shows only when you are. I have known you since you were a boy, Severus."

"What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide." For a moment, he wants to kick himself. Narcissa will think he's mocking her, surely.

"Henry VI. Edward to... Warwick, I believe. That play is not one of my favorites, though. And you are changing the subject." Narcissa's hands move gracefully as she pours the tea, remembering that he has his black with lemon, and nudges it into his hands. "I'd no idea you enjoyed such, Severus."

Not for the first time, Narcissa has him flatfooted with shock. "I. Well. I do enjoy the histories and tragedies."

"I will give you the histories, but with full mind that he was a creature of his age - the Tudors were unforgiving of anything but adherence. However, one cannot be said to enjoy a tragedy, Severus."

"I enjoy that it is not me."

Narcissa's lips twitch, and then she laughs without artifice. "Oh! Oh! Point well taken! Severus, you must unleash your tongue more often - you have a sharp wit. You're fit to be more than someone's shadow."

The steam of his tea eddies as he raises his cup, the scent of lemon sharp and clean atop the notes of rose and Assam black. "You are the only one who seems to think so." On the stage of life he is not the dashing and handsome lead, but at best a character player. A casting type, if you will. A second fiddle. Certainly Lucius would be a Romeo and he a Balthasar - servant and foil to the handsome lead.

Narcissa arches an eyebrow, taking a sip of her tea. "I always rather thought Romeo was a twit."

Severus can feel his jaw drop, and then he's laughing harder than he has in years, or possibly ever. So much for the romantic ideal! Perhaps it is only the shock coming atop the stress of the evening, but Severus laughs until his cheek is resting on the table and his tears are soaking into the fine linen cloth. He simply cannot stop, even when the laughter starts to hurt. The unexpected stroke of her fingers through his hair stops his hysteria in mid-yammer.

"Now, a romantic hero, a proper one, is perhaps a Bassiano - who chose the leaden casket to win his Portia. Why would a woman not choose one with wits and cleverness instead of a spouting of twaddle, mooning about her window and fighting with her relatives?" Her fingertips trace the curve of his ear. "There is an age when a girl will find that attractive and perhaps a little rebellious, but it can pall."

Caught in that moment, Severus can scarcely order his thoughts. Is she saying...? Does she mean to imply...?

"I have always favored Shakespeare's comedies, filled with strong and resourceful women. Even when he upholds societal rubrics and his peers' impression of women, he yet subtly mocks it and them." The timbre of her voice warms, her hand lingering on his cheek. "The courtly ideal, the chivalry, it can be lovely to be someone's - but there are times when only a kiss will do."

Shocked, he raises his head fractionally, staring at her as she sets her cup silently in the saucer and leans in, lips brushing and then settling on his, tasting of tea and rose. There is no mockery and no artifice in her kiss, only a warming passion that poets can but poorly describe. Her perfume intoxicates and arouses, her fingers are in his hair, her hand cupping his cheek and for the first time in his life Severus understands why people must close their eyes when they kiss.

~Fin


End file.
